I flashed on Amelia White and her children and felt nauseated as I said, “I remember now. You called him Master Sergeant Psycho.”
“Never to his face, man,” Sampson said, sounding horrified at that idea. “Brooker was stone-cold deadly. Scared the crap out of everyone. I never wanted to cross him.”
“You sure it was him outside the church?”
“Positive,” he said. “Little grayer, little paunchier, but it was Brooker. No doubt about it and no idea why he was there. On a different topic, I signed the documents to have Billie’s body exhumed. I don’t want to—I know M is just exploiting her death—but I have to do it.”
“That’s a lot on your plate for one day,” I said, feeling for the guy. “And I understand your reasons completely. Keep me posted. About all of it. Love you, man.”
“Same to you. How’s Bree?”
“Haven’t heard from her yet today but praying she stays safe.”
“From here as well, brother,” Sampson said and hung up.
While Loughlin oversaw the criminologists and agents arriving by the minute, Mahoney and I located the password to the Reisings’ elaborate security system, which included alarms and multiple cameras mounted high around the exterior of the house. We accessed the system, backed up the video recordings, and watched the feeds at high speed, but we saw nothing on the grounds after eleven p.m., when the two now-dead FBI agents had walked the perimeter.
“That’s impossible,” Mahoney said, gesturing at the feed from over the front door. “Agent Deeds died right there. We never see him. We never see anything.”
“Not true,” I said. “Watch this.” I tapped the feed that overlooked the pool. “Keep your eye on the potted plants. Wait for it.”
Thirty seconds later, a rodent bolted from the vegetation and scampered across the pool deck.
“What is that?” Mahoney asked.
“Tree rat,” Loughlin said.
“He does it every two minutes,” I said.
“The tree rat does?” Mahoney said, incredulous.
“Definitely. I think they hacked into the system and bypassed the actual cameras. We’re looking at a loop inserted into the recording, probably from before they attacked. Every feed’s showing a loop.”
“Well, they can’t have done it to every camera in the neighborhood,” Loughlin said. “We’ll pick them up.”
While the LA SAC assigned agents to canvass the area and request all security-camera footage, Mahoney and I tried to figure out how the killers had entered the estate and house without tripping alarms. We found no obvious footprints in the irrigated garden soil anywhere around the base of the high wall surrounding the estate.
But then I noticed that the moist earth in the northwest corner was slightly depressed in an area two feet wide by three feet long. When I got down on my hands and knees, I saw several dozen coarse fibers, each two to three inches, sticking up from the mud.
I picked up a few and stared at them and then at the nearby plants. “I have no idea what these are, but they shouldn’t be here,” I said, showing them to Mahoney.
Ned turned up the magnification on his phone camera and aimed it at the fibers. “I know what those are,” he said within seconds.
“You do?”
“I have an old coco doormat out in the breezeway at my place at the beach. It’s made from coconut fibers and tends to shed as it ages. Popular in Mexico.”
I looked up at the wall. “So, after they hack the security system, the cartel hit men climb the wall, toss down a coco doormat, and drop down on it. Then they jump to the grass and cross to the house.”
I pointed to the closest window and the closest door. “There or there.”
We went to them and examined them closely. It wasn’t until Mahoney did that nifty trick with his phone camera again that we saw the tiny nicks around the doorknob and the dead bolt.
We brought Loughlin out and showed him the evidence and told him our theory.
“After they come over the wall, one or more of them comes here,” Mahoney said. “Picks the lock while two, maybe three others circle on Deeds and Cruise. Shoot him in the face and her in the back with pistols with suppressors. Then they’re inside to do the rest of their bloody work.”
“We’re thinking they’re out of here in an hour, tops,” I said. “They probably walked right out the front gate.”
“Carrying that coco mat,” Mahoney said.
“Arrogant bastards,” Loughlin said. He looked at me. “You might be right, you know, Alex.”